Not Your Sidekick Review: Is It Worth Reading?

Verdict: A warm, funny YA superhero story with a sweet bisexual lead and a cute sapphic romance, held back by twists most readers see coming and a book-one ending that leaves the big plot wide open.

Best for: Teen and adult readers who want a light, inclusive superhero adventure with a girl-meets-girl crush at its heart, and who’ll forgive clunky prose and an obvious mystery for good company.

Heat level: ★☆☆☆☆ (1/5: young adult, kissing only)

Rating: ★★★★☆ (3.6/5: a 3.86 Goodreads average across 8,800+ ratings, pulled down by predictability and editing complaints)

Tropes: Superheroes, powerless heroine, secret identities, heroes vs villains, longtime crush, internship with the enemy, bisexual heroine, friend squad, conspiracy, coming of age.

Not Your Sidekick by C.B. Lee is book one of the Sidekick Squad series, a young adult sci-fi and superhero novel first published by Interlude Press’s Duet Books imprint in 2016 and set in a 22nd-century town called Andover, where Jess Tran, the only member of a superpowered family with no powers at all, takes a paid internship that drops her into the wrong side of the hero business and right next to Abby, the girl she’s liked for ages.

It holds a 3.86 average across 8,836 Goodreads ratings and 1,753 written reviews, it was a 2017 finalist for both the Lambda Literary Award and the Bisexual Book Award, and Kirkus gave it a notably cool review. Readers mostly love it and mostly guessed the twists. Both halves of that are worth knowing before you start.

What Is Not Your Sidekick About?

This is YA superhero fiction first and a romance second. Kirkus puts it at ages 14 to 18 and the other trade review I found says 12 and up, so think high school, not new adult. The genre engine is simple: generations ago, solar flares and the disasters that followed switched on powers in part of the population. Powers show up before you turn 17. Heroes answer to an official league, villains go by stage names, and the whole thing plays out in a future North America that’s been through a third world war.

Jess is almost 17 and still has nothing. Her parents are small-time heroes, her older sister Claudia is a hero too, and Jess has more or less made peace with being the ordinary one. What she wants is a future, which is why a paid internship that asks for no experience looks perfect. Abby, her classmate and longtime crush, turns out to be working there too. The book stays in Jess’s point of view the whole way, so you get her blind spots along with her jokes, and that choice matters a lot for the mystery.

What Makes This YA Sapphic Superhero Book Work

The representation: The single most praised thing in the reviews. Jess is bisexual and Chinese-Vietnamese, like the author, and her best friend Bells is a trans boy written with real care. Readers keep saying it feels lived-in rather than added.
Jess and Abby: The girls’ slow crush-to-couple arc is the part people call the highlight, even readers who rated the rest at three stars. It’s a gentle friends-to-lovers story with a first kiss, banter and nothing heavier.
The tone: Light, funny and hopeful. Reviewers who’ve had enough of grim dystopias single out how this one avoids hopelessness.
The friend squad: Bells and Emma round out a group of friends readers liked enough to follow into the sequels, which are built around the same circle.
The superhero setup: Solar-flare powers, a hero league, villains with stage names and a girl with no powers stuck in the middle. A few readers call the world fresh, though more of them find it thin (see below).

Book Synopsis

Jess Tran is the odd one out at home. Her parents fight crime in costume, her sister has powers, and Jess has spent years waiting for something to switch on. It hasn’t. She’s nearly 17 now, past the age when it usually happens, so she’s decided to be practical: good grades, a paid internship, a résumé that might get her somewhere in a world built around people who can do things she can’t.

The internship is at Monroe Industries, a tech company that wants no experience and pays real money. It turns out to be a front for Andover’s best-known supervillain. Jess keeps the job anyway. She’s sharing an office with Abby, the girl she’s had feelings for since forever, and with a mysterious masked intern who only goes by M. Abby, it seems pretty clear, has a secret of her own.

Then villains around town start disappearing, and the explanations don’t add up. Jess begins to wonder whether the heroes she grew up admiring, maybe even the official league that runs them, are telling the truth about who the bad guys are. She has no powers, a crush she can’t quite act on, and a job she can’t tell her parents about. What exactly is she working for?

My Review

The best thing about Not Your Sidekick is how easy it is to spend time with Jess. She’s funny, she’s a little lost, and her family and cultural life sit on the page without anyone making a speech about them. Shira Glassman at the Lesbrary wrote that “the whole thing shines with authenticity and verisimilitude,” and that matches what most readers say. A bisexual Asian American girl as the lead of a superhero book was still rare in 2016, and you can feel why it found its people.

The romance is the other real pleasure. Jess and Abby drift from awkward classmates to co-workers to something more, and it’s sweet in the way a first crush is sweet. It isn’t a side plot either. It’s woven through the internship and the mystery, so the love story and the superhero story move together. Bells steals scenes whenever he’s on the page.

Where it struggles is the mystery, and this is the most repeated criticism I found by a long way. Fourteen of the thirty most popular Goodreads reviews say they guessed the big twist early, and several add that Jess takes far too long to notice what’s in front of her. A few readers say that’s part of the fun. More find it frustrating. On top of that, Kirkus and several readers flag the writing itself: too much telling, awkward word choices, an infodump in the first chapter, and at least one blogger counted grammar slips and a character called by the wrong name. The future setting is the third issue. At least five of those top reviews say the world doesn’t hang together, and a Lesbrary reviewer asked why it’s set in the future at all when it reads like a modern high school.

The expectation to reset is the ending. This is book one of a four-book series, and while Jess and Abby land in a happy place, the conspiracy is nowhere near done. Readers split on whether to call that a cliffhanger. Most say it isn’t one, but it’s unresolved, and one blogger called it anticlimactic. If you want a complete story, plan on reading on. If you just want the girls together, you’ll get that here.

My honest note: A charming cast and a cute sapphic crush carry a superhero plot you’ll probably solve before Jess does. If obvious twists and rough prose spoil a book for you, this one will test you. If you want something kind, funny and queer with capes, it’s a pleasant few evenings.

Element	In Not Your Sidekick
Central relationship	Jess Tran and Abby: powerless teen and her longtime crush, co-interns at a villain’s company. Central to the plot, YA crush-to-couple arc
Core tropes	Superheroes, powerless heroine, secret identities, heroes vs villains, internship with the enemy, friend squad
Setting	Andover, a 22nd-century town where solar flares gave some people powers before age 17
Heat level	1/5: young adult, kissing only
Series	Sidekick Squad book 1 of 4. Happy-for-now for Jess and Abby, main plot left open; book 4 still unpublished
Content notes	Racism, biphobia and transphobia, bullying, drugging, kidnapping and captivity, physical assault and injury, nonconsensual medical experimentation, an implied forced breeding program, missing parents

How Spicy Is Not Your Sidekick?

A 1/5, and that’s a description, not a complaint. It’s a YA novel with a trade age range of 12 or 14 and up, and I couldn’t read romance.io’s steam band for it. So the number comes from the age range and from what readers report: a first kiss, crush feelings, a sleepover scene one Lesbrary reviewer praised for its tension, and nothing sexual on the page.

The one thing worth naming in advance isn’t heat at all. One Goodreads reader objects that the relationship is built on a secret Abby keeps from Jess, and another raises a consent concern about a part of the romance. Those are single voices, not themes, but if deception in a love story bothers you, now you know. For other closed-door YA reads in the same band, Hani and Ishu’s Guide to Fake Dating and These Witches Don’t Burn both sit at 1/5 on this site.

Who Should Read This Book?

You’ll likely love it if: you want a light, upbeat superhero story, a bisexual heroine of color matters to you, you like a sweet girl-meets-girl crush more than angst, and you enjoy a friend group as much as the couple.

You may want to skip it if: you need a mystery that keeps you guessing, clunky prose or typos pull you out of a story, you want tight, logical worldbuilding, or you need book one to wrap up the main plot.

In short: great company and a cute romance, in a superhero plot that’s easier to solve than it should be.

What Readers Are Actually Saying (October 2026)

This is a ten-year-old book with a steady, long tail rather than a buzz moment. I couldn’t get usable StoryGraph, TikTok or Reddit data for it, so this section leans on Goodreads, the trade reviews and the queer book blogs. What keeps it in front of readers is easy to trace: two 2017 award shortlists, a Tantor audiobook in 2018, a library presence through hoopla, and an anniversary edition from Interlude Press in September 2021 with previously unpublished material and an interview with Lee about inclusive YA. The audiobook is narrated by Emily Woo Zeller and runs 8 hours 1 minute. Both Kirkus and AudioFile praised her performance, and at least one Goodreads reader calls out her character voices.

Why readers love it (according to the discourse): The representation comes first and comes up constantly: Jess’s bisexuality and her Chinese-Vietnamese family, Bells as a trans character handled with care, and a cast that isn’t all white. “Cute” is the recurring word for the romance, and several three-star reviewers say Jess and Abby were the best part. The light, hopeful tone gets named a lot, often by readers tired of darker YA dystopias. A handful of readers also defend the predictability, saying the twists are meant to be enjoyed rather than solved. That’s worth knowing, because it’s the exact opposite of the loudest complaint.

What readers argue about and complain about: Predictability, above everything. Fourteen of the top thirty Goodreads reviews say they saw the main reveal coming, and several fault Jess for missing clues for so long. One reader who rated it 2.5 stars put it bluntly: “nothing was happening for the entire first half of the book.” The second theme is worldbuilding. Readers say the 22nd-century setting has today’s slang, social norms and tech, and that the rules of the world shift when the plot needs them to. Third is the writing. Kirkus calls it “a superhero tale that never quite takes flight,” citing telling over showing and awkward word choices, and readers add tense shifts, cheesy villain monologues and editing slips. Opinions divide on pacing: some found the first half slow, others thought the back half rushed.

The series question everyone should ask first: Jess and Abby end book one together, so the romance lands on a happy-for-now. The superhero plot doesn’t close. Book two, Not Your Villain (2017), sits at 3.84 on Goodreads across 2,740 ratings, and book three, Not Your Backup (2019), at 3.87 across 1,062. Book four, Not Your Hero, is billed as the final volume, but Goodreads lists no release date and one book database shows an expected release of 2027. If you hate unfinished series, know that the full story has been waiting on its ending for years.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does Not Your Sidekick end on a cliffhanger?

Not really. Jess and Abby end the book together, but the larger conspiracy is left open for the sequels, and most readers call it unresolved rather than a true cliffhanger.

Is the sapphic romance central in Not Your Sidekick?

Yes, though it shares the page with the superhero plot. Jess and Abby’s crush-to-couple arc runs through the whole book, and many readers name it as the highlight.

How spicy is Not Your Sidekick?

A 1/5. It’s young adult fiction with a trade age range of 12 or 14 and up, and readers report kissing and crush feelings only, with nothing sexual on the page.

Is the Sidekick Squad series finished?

Not yet. Three books are out (2016, 2017 and 2019), and the fourth and final book, Not Your Hero, has no confirmed release date as of October 2026.

Is there an audiobook of Not Your Sidekick?

Yes. Tantor Audio released it in 2018, narrated by Emily Woo Zeller and running 8 hours 1 minute, and both Kirkus and AudioFile praised the narration.

Does Jess have superpowers?

Not at the start. She’s the only member of her family without powers, and she’s nearly 17, past the age when powers usually show up, which is what sends her looking for an internship.

If You Loved Not Your Sidekick, Read These Next

If it was the bisexual heroine and the gentle first-love arc that got you, Hani and Ishu’s Guide to Fake Dating gives you a bi lead of color at the same closed-door heat, minus the capes. If the hidden-powers-in-a-normal-town angle is the draw, These Witches Don’t Burn swaps superheroes for a secret witch community. And if what stuck with you was the official institution lying about who the villains are, Cinderella Is Dead turns that idea into a full YA rebellion. I haven’t found another sapphic superhero novel reviewed on the site yet.

For more in this register, browse our lesbian YA books list, the bisexual sapphic books and Asian sapphic books guides, or the full Book Reviews collection.

The Bottom Line

Not Your Sidekick wants to be a fun, inclusive superhero story, and on its own terms it mostly is. Jess is easy to love, the romance with Abby is sweet, and the friend group feels like people you’d want to hang out with. It’s also predictable, loosely edited, and set in a future that never quite convinces. Whether that trade works for you comes down to how much you care about being surprised. If you’re reading for the characters and the crush, it’s a good time, with the warning that the series is still waiting on its final book. Check Not Your Sidekick on Amazon →

The Eikna Overall Ranking

On the Eikna scale, Not Your Sidekick ranks as a warm, character-first YA sapphic superhero story. Its cast and its representation are the draw, while a guessable mystery and rough prose hold it back. Read it for Jess, Abby and Bells rather than for the twists.